Private water systems have to be the dumbest idea ever presented. What happens if they fail to provide water? What choice does the customer have? Did the customer get to select which water company to buy from? What is the advantage of privatization if the service is a monopoly?

All monopolies should be public owned. That is the only way of controlling costs. Ny definition, there is no competition for a monopoly.

Well, in the US, the woman’s family would at least get a major settlement in the lawsuit that would follow any such accident, unless “tort reform” was part of Howard’s package.

It will probably take a decade to get the National Guard back to its former level, and then only if the Feds keep their hands off the troops.

Howard privatized everything he could get his greedy hands on! We used to have a great service run by MMBW (Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works). They were a Vic Gov agency responsible for water and sewerage (mainly). Now we have Melbourne Water, City West Water and South East Water. None of the three like each other or wants to work with the others (they are, after all, private corporations) and went so far as to ensure their wouldn’t be any cooperation by convincing the Gov that it was necessary to remove the aging old pipes linking the three networks together because the cost of upgrading them would mean that prices would have to rise a lot, and they had an election coming. 🙂 So, there is no way to move water from one system that has an excess to another that doesn’t have enough. 🙂

It’s the same with Electricity, Gas, Rail, etc. All the services and utilities were privatized and prices have been increasing ever since, but the actual services have been deteriorating. Case in point: Yesterday a woman was killed when her car was hit by an express train on a level crossing in peak hour because the signals and boom gates didn’t function. Apparently, they had been serviced for a minor problem the day before. So a minor fault became a major problem and someone was killed. Happens all the time since privatization!

Doncha love Capitalism?

I (and many others) no longer think this is a drought. We think this is the new norm, but the problem is that nobody has any accurate idea how long this new *norm* will last! *shrug*

I blogged that using the Nat Guard was the dumbest thing the Bushmoron cartel did back in 2004. I still don’t believe the military was so stupid as to allow it! It’s dumb for so many reasons! And Americans (for the most part), still don’t get it!

Whole World is insane.

At least the snow pack provides a gradual source of water, but 30% in the reservoirs is a definite problem. At some point desalination plants are going to have to be built or areas abandoned because of the drought, which might be the new normal weather pattern.

An old police sergeant told me that the proper manning standard was “too many people if nothing is happening and not enough if anything goes down.” We use the National Guard to fill in when there are problems, but the military adventurism of the Hedgemony has really damaged that resource. That was a major problem in the response to Katrina, as the Louisiana National Guard’s equipment [communications and swamp vehicles] was in Iraq. Now people aren’t joining the Guard because they are concerned that what had always been a part-time job could mean a year+ away from job and family in a war zone.

In other news, the area in and around Brisbane has been getting its butt kicked by the weather butterfly lately – tornadoes followed by floods. It’s comforting to read about someone else’s state government getting pilloried for “inadequate response”.

You have my sympathy! And it used to happen to me a lot… I haven’t bothered trying for some time. It’s an exercise in futility. I learned that trying to use logic, common sense and even real morals, all fail when confronted by that most glaring example of retro-genetics (throwbacks) the ‘True Believer!!'(tm) The only thing you can really do to change them, is kill them. *shrug*

They also prove that the World (especially the USA for some reason in the past 60 years or so, but certainly not only the USA) breeds an unusually high percentage of true *simpletons*. The ONLY logic they understand, and once embedded it CANNOT be changed, is ‘If A then B’! Everything is *Absolute!* to them. They have a very narrow tunnel-visioned, single-minded purpose. They would have made the Third Reich proud, and I suspect many have some form of genetic link. 😉

They are drones. They are used by the unscrupulous and the unethical. They are the American equivalent of most suicide-bombers. They are programed, turned on, and let loose to wreak havoc by their masters. All you can hope to do to avert disaster is get them before they get you. Unfortunately, most people, even the sane, consider these drones human and won’t do anything to stop them. *shrug*

Stupidity is it’s own reward.

IMNSHO of course. 😉

When your sources of news are Fox News, talk radio, and what you heard at the tavern, cogent reflection on reality is not in the cards. I have a feeling that they missed the part of the Bible that told them that when what is prophesized fails to materialize you have a fraud, not a true voice of G-d. They keep listening to people who have been shown to be liars. It is a form of mental illness, not a rational response in any form.

What do I know. My usual response to people ranting about abortions is to simply tell them that if they don’t like them, don’t have one. Which is really confusing to them for some reason. Then I follow up with something along the lines of “I don’t like Fords. Do I get to tell you, you can’t buy a Ford? If you are going to get to tell someone else how to live their lives, sooner or later they are going to tell you how you have to live yours.” They generally lose the thread and can’t understand the relationship.

Ya know… it should tell the average American something when all the WORST Biz people in the World find a happy home in the USA. 😉 LOL

A Page 3 girl would be a definite improvement. Then all those rednecks will buy WSJ too then because then they will have some pictures to look at. 😀

PS: What you say about the media is true. And the indications are that many people are realizing it, mostly the current young generation, and using the ‘net for their news. Circulation has been dropping steadily for some years now. And TV is not much better. FOX has consistently ranked low in all ratings. I see that 60 Minutes on CBS scored very high on Neilson ratings with the Obama Interview. 🙂

Well… we can but hope that the trend will continue once all the current old fogies who still love them some GOP are dead and buried. Preferable on a planet far, far away! We don’t need their ghosts making a nuisance of themselves. LOL

The American media is owned by corporations. The people who run corporations all tend to be Republicans, so the bias is a feature not a bug. Obama received good coverage in the primary, because the media hate the Clintons. There wasn’t much they could do for McCain when he went into melt down on the campaign trail and his media people were really bad, like the rest of his campaign.

Now, of course, things will revert to the standard negative bias against a Democratic administration. If three years down the road a cure for cancer is discovered, the media will produce “proof” that the Shrubbery was actually responsible. Just like they will claim that the current economy was really the fault of the Democrats. That’s the way things have always been.

You will notice how much attention is being paid to Bill Clinton’s business dealings since Hillary Clinton was put in the spotlight as possible Secretary of State. Nothing at all has been said about the various interests of the Bush family, not even the huge profits being made by the President’s brother, Neil , from the No Child Left Behind program. To the media a possible Clinton scandal is worth 10 actual Bush scandals.

If anyone was really interested, the “burrowing” and purging could be fixed in a couple of weeks by a task force of lawyers familiar with Federal civil service law. They wait too long to do this. It should have been done a year in advance to stand. Most of what has been done is in clear violation of the civil service laws, but you can’t wait because if you delay, it is a bitch to undo.

At this point I would recommend that they start arranging to send to incoming managers to the 40-hour seminar that the Cornell School of Industrial Relations runs. They have an innocuous name for the course, but it really is about how you fire civil service employees. The process takes a little time, but, like much of civil service, once started the result is inevitable. A little documentation, a little event scheduling, and pretty soon the process is on auto-pilot and the targeted employee will resign rather than lose everything they have built up by being fired.

Your boy Rupert Murdock owns the WSJ these days, so everyone knew this was coming. I’m still waiting for the first “Page 3 Girl”.